An Rx for Low Level Dread

I recently attended a lecture and Q&A with M. Gessen, one of the savviest observers of American and international politics working today. Gessen’s topic was authoritarian leaders, how they rise, the tactics they employ, and how the US currently compares with other right-wing autocracies. We’re not as far along as Russia or China, obviously, but Trump and company are doing their best to herd us in that direction. The electoral defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary is a positive development, an example of a pro-democracy result against an entrenched authoritarian with close ties to Putin and Trump. The main lesson American voters should take from the outcome is simple and obvious: turnout matters, especially against a rigged system.

Like all autocrats, Trump sold himself as a savior by seizing on the public’s fears and anxieties and promising a return to a time that never existed. After studying authoritarian regimes and politics for a long time, writing eleven books, including the excellent Surviving Autocracy, Gessen knows of what they speak. Recounting listening to a presentation about human trafficking, Gessen was struck by the similarities in language between traffickers and authoritarians; it’s a framework of power and control constructed of surprisingly similar materials. Traffickers promise a better situation and a special relationship — one available only to a select few, insiders, people in the know. No outsider can understand this relationship. The trafficker controls every aspect of the victims’ life, when and where they can travel, shop, how they dress, and who they can communicate with. Traffickers create and enforce the rules of a tightly-controlled world.

When Gessen made these remarks I thought about some of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, young girls from broken homes, some already traumatized, lost souls ripe for manipulation and exploitation.

Donald Trump has forced Americans to live in his self-created world since 2015, with disastrous consequences for our country and democracy as that world becomes ever more divorced from reality. Up is down, black is white, war is peace, ignorance is strength, and make-believe is truth can only work for so long. Trump identifies our enemies, internally and externally, and his base follows, certain that Trump knows best and will lead them to a future free of fear and anxiety, whether these emotions are caused by economic dislocation, fear of crime, a perceived threat to whiteness, immigration or transgender people. Trump claims he can set it all right. Gessen theorized that Trump supporters fear the future — more precisely, they fear creating a place for themselves in the future — and are therefore willing to give up their freedom, autonomy of thought, and agency. As a theory it’s as valid as any I’ve heard during the past decade, though I still believe that historians, political scientists and sociologists will be studying the phenomenon of Trump’s base for many years to come.

The idea of creating the future is one worth ruminating upon. Trump is trapped in Iran with no good options, and despite strange confidence on Wall Street, the global economy looks poised for a recession. If polls are accurate, more Americans seem disillusioned with Trump’s erratic behavior, bizarre social media pronouncements and constant pettiness. Picking a fight with the Pope, antagonizing foreign leaders and destroying our country’s credibility are not popular. Trump’s empty promises to lower the cost of everything on Day 1 were nothing but smoke, and while he enriches his cronies his party gleefully sledgehammers the remnants of the social safety net. The future offered by Trump and his MAGA cult is bleak, filled with suffering, chaos and hardship. M. Gessen pointed to the citizens of Minneapolis and Zohran Mamdani in New York City as examples of future-making based on networks of care, solidarity and relationships of mutual trust, not fear. The point Gessen was making is that Trump’s reign will end and when it does we need a framework to replace it. We can be sure of a couple of things: MAGA will live on and Democrats will attempt to lead us right back to the failed status quo that created the grievances MAGA has exploited.

Americans are not encouraged to think about what we want politically, and that is a reason we find ourselves subject to Trump’s mercurial and incompetent rule. Under Trump’s onslaught against our institutions and the Constitution, it’s not surprising that people succumb to the kind of despair that extinguishes hope and convinces them that they have no agency. This was another point M. Gessen made. Community groups, social movements and civic organizations are breeding grounds of agency, courage and ideas. Civic groups were key vectors of solidarity in Poland and Czechoslovakia against highly repressive regimes.

It turns out that we need other people to make a reasonably healthy society. For nearly fifty years the dominant message in our society has been that collective action is not only impossible but an affront to individual freedom. The idea that each of us is on our own, responsible only for ourselves, and that we owe other people nothing was never true. Red state or Blue state, white or Black, male or female, queer or straight, urban or rural, we all have a common stake and an entire country to regain and make decent again.